"None seeks after God"

I've been thinking a lot about Romans 3:10–11 over the last few weeks. Those verses have long puzzled me, because it's self evident that there are men and women who are deeply interested in God. So there's an apparent contradiction between Scripture and what we actually experience.

It seems to me this conflict is resolved in Romans 1:21–23. When Romans 3:11 says that not one seeks after God, I take that to mean that not one seeks after God as He really is. Fallen men and women are entirely willing to worship gods they themselves imagine. They're deeply interested in a god who is out there somewhere, but doesn't have any real claim to their obedience and submission. What they're not willing to do, is to submit themselves to the God who created them.

I remember hearing Ellis Potter say in one of the L'Abri Ideas Library recordings that in the fall, man put himself at the center of the universe. That's not our only problem, but it's a huge problem. We find it impossible to relate to the God who really is the center of the universe, because we simply can't see that it is He – and not we – who is the center.

It's not in the nature of unregenerate man to acknowledge the God who is really there.